Test your Guesses
It sometimes happens that the idea that you’ve spent months working on, once you get it out there, just simply doesn’t fly...
On the other hand, the idea that came to you five minutes ago, might.
Testing is an exercise in translating ideas for the rest of the world: seeing if it works, in the best way possible. What works in one campaign, won’t necessarily work in the next one.
The language or imagery used one year, could change totally by the time the next one rolls around.
Testing will tell you whether the thing you are doing is effective.
Get Your Feedback
Obviously, you need to have enough data first for testing. In order to get it, you can ask your audience. You might collect information through an action form or through online surveys.
If you do enough data acquisition, you will end up with an ample sample from which you can extrapolate such data as, e.g.: how engaged and excited your audience is to be involved, how deeply engaged they are, and what kind of issues they’re interested in.
By testing, you learn to understand your audience better: what they like or dislike, what “makes them tick”, what they’re moved by.
Every situation, every campaign is different. So, the only way we may know what is working for our audience is to be listening for feedback: collected from the system, from our data, from our allies and target audience and also from our team members.
Try to Make It Perfect
To be able to interpret the test results, you’ll need to have concrete figures that you can compare your results to. They will provide you with benchmarks.
So, testing is actually all about refining: making something better, stronger, more effective than it was before.
This could be applied to email or social media campaigns: making sure the messages, images, ideas you have are as good as they can be in order to achieve your outcomes.
Testing makes your campaign more effective in the long run. It is also about making day-to-day decisions. Analysing data after running a campaign is commendable, but using the data to make campaign decisions is great. It may play a valuable role in refining and perfecting the details of our campaign.
Remember that every test is a milestone leading to a bigger story.
To learn more about the campaigner’s mindset and how to get better at online campaigning, register for our free, self-paced course: “Online Campaigning – Advanced Course - Part Four”!
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